Lee raced down the abandoned street, heaving in panic as he slid on the ice. Behind him came an abhorrent grotesquerie, lurching and galumphing on seven hirsute, knobbly legs, its eyes fixed on him as it incanted, in tones dreadful and bilious, the foulest concatenation that ever he’d heard. Foul in nature, and foul in content, for the appalling thing was inquiring about Christmas.
Lee had never liked Christmas - not as a kid, not as a young adult, and not now that the skeletal relict of a primaeval diatom was chasing him down the street at midnight on a Saturday, jabbering at him about cookies.
This may strike some as a surprise, for Lee Gil-Dong was the Young Master of the prestigious Lee Family, the largest producer of Christmas household goods in the city, but it was true. The only Christmas wealth he cared for was cold, hard cash - the colder, the better, for Lee knew that in order to have absolute power one needed to excise warmth and dependence from one's life.
Absolute power - though Lee suspected he'd never live to see that day. The thing had reached inside its own body and, from black caverns of benighted space, produced a vile, eldritch foodstuff, whose sight filled Lee with loathing, and which was all but certainly made from the ground bones of his enemies.
***
Yaaroghkh had no clue why the man was running from him. Sure, it might be a surprise to see a gelatinous, staggering monstrosity in your bedroom at midnight, and Yaaroghkh knew that humans found the architecture of his physiology difficult to appreciate aesthetically, but that was no reason to smash through your own window and run down the street screaming.
He had asked Caedes if he might talk to the next target first. He agreed that putting lead in children's dolls was revoltingly evil, but he hadn't even offered to give him coal before threatening to off him. And Santa always gave coal first, before letting Krampus take possession of the Naughty. Plus, he knew that the Lee Company was aware of the world of cultivation, so surely their Young Master would be able to stomach the sight of him.
Apparently not. Truth be told, it was rather offensive to Yaaroghkh to be called an abomination - after all, he’d never forced his workers to work without breaks, nor was he guilty of fraud and embezzlement, which was more than could be said for the Lee Company - but he was a friendly sort, and was willing to forgive the man his fear if he’d sit down and have a conversation.
Hoping to draw him into a more pleasant mood, Yaaroghkh produced a spare coffee cake he’d been keeping for a snack, but at the sight of his tasty, if algebraically antipodean, treat Lee gave one final shriek, and collapsed backwards into the snow. By the time Yaaroghkh reached him he was already unreachable, his mind blasted into atoms and his consciousness wandering amid the outer dark.
“Told you,” Caedes said, as he floated overhead on his Flying Psychologist’s Sofa (Flying Swords are terrible for catching a good snooze), eating a candy cane. “You should leave the talking to me - you may be friendlier, but I’m more, how do you say it, approachable.”
Yaaroghkh sighed and hung his head (assuming that the bent part was actually a neck). “Fine. But in future, you let them pick the coal first.”
***
Frida was doing dips, terrified. She had no clue what was happening - one minute she’d been carefully explaining to a Health and Safety Inspector precisely what would happen to him and his family if he continued his investigation, the next a crazy guy waving a toddler in a sack was in her office, using what was clearly demonic qi to interrogate her about whether she was defiling Christmas.
“Your Kahigh Family stands to benefit immensely if Christmas is cancelled: you’re one of the largest overseers of children’s workhouses in the city. You’re constantly fighting court challenges to your policies in the parliament - challenges driven, in part, by the essences of Wonder, Innocence, and Hope that people imbibe every Christmas - and as part of those challenges you have to waste money giving Christmas celebrations to the children in your unpaid employ.”
Frida whimpered. She’d heard the Master of Puppets was intense - every noble knew of his shadowy campaign against corruption in the city - but she had no clue he went in for Christmas cheer. Wasn’t this type of vigilante supposed to be a serious, dreary obsessive, muttering darkly about the evil of man in his underground cave?
“You have it all wrong,” she said desperately, hoping against hope that he’d leave when he found out the truth. “It’s true that we lose a lot of money on court cases, but we turn a profit on Christmas itself. Or did you forget that one of our companies, Kahigh Toys United, is one of the biggest distributors to the city? Did you think we got all those toys from the Ell Company? Every year, Santa leaves all the children in our workhouses all manner of expertly made toys, which we can resell for a premium. And all we have to do is let the kids test some of our bedding products for a single night, to make it look like they have blankets and pillows.”
“So you really weren’t the one responsible for attacking Santa’s workshop?”
“Noo,” she practically wailed, working through her third minute of horse stance. “Until now, I thought he’d outsourced his labour to the Second Ming Dynasty - who knew all that stuff about cute little elves and galloping reindeer was true?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Fine, I believe you,” said Caedes, who had his instant lie detector sending approving signals from the sack by his side. “And now I’ll give you a choice: holding a burning coal, or the Christmas Elf?”
She froze. Was this a trick question? Was ‘the Christmas Elf’ his pet name for his Chainsaw of Disemboweling? “Is…is the Christmas Elf an actual elf?”
“Of course. I have him here with me, direct from Santa’s workshop.” Caedes said, hefting the sack. Frida gulped.
“Th-then the Christmas Elf.”
Caedes nodded and opened the sack, whirling Yaaroghkh through the air.
“I don’t think you understand what I meant by ‘coal,’” Yaaroghkh said calmly, as Frida started to spasm.
***
"Are you joking, man?" Joss asked, genuinely confused. "Why would I want the Fat Man dead? Think about it - come Christmas time there's a massive rush on raw ham, and it's the perfect opportunity for our Raw Meat Inc. to make absolute bank selling off our backstock - you know, the stuff that's 'expired' or that's been 'improperly treated for listeria.' Even better, when people get sick they assume they ate too much food, and don’t think to blame the food itself. We'd lose so much money if Christmas got cancelled, man."
Caedes didn't even have to say anything: before he could, Yaaroghkh burst from the gift wrap crying "Death, or the Christmas Elf?"
"Aaaiiiieeeee!"
***
Laetitia smirked. She posed confidently at the top of the stairs, dressed to kill, with nearly two dozen guards pointing their guns at Caedes. The latter stood at the bottom of the stairs in her mansion, holding a childlike lump under his arm.
“Give it up, Master of Puppets,” she sneered. “I don’t know why you came up with this ridiculous story about someone ‘attacking Santa’s workshop’ - as if we haven’t made that Fatso nearly irrelevant anyways - or why you’ve chosen to confront me over this ludicrous farce rather than the fact that our testing of demonic cultivation resources on children has received state approval. But you have no chance: all of these guards are in the Second Circuit, and combined are more than a match for you.”
Caedes said nothing, simply throwing Yaaroghkh like a javelin.
“Wheeeeee,” the elf said as he careened through the air, an anfractuous bundle of cacodaimonic Christmas joy. Screams of madness and despair followed in his wake.
***
By this time the police were out in full force, looking for the fantastical pair who had knocked out some sixty guards and driven five arrogant Young Masters and Mistresses completely insane. They were not, admittedly, looking very hard - they didn’t like the arrogant Young Masters and Mistresses much more than the attackers did, and though a bribe is a bribe that doesn’t mean you need to put effort into your search. Still, even a lazy police search was a police search, and Caedes and Yaaroghkh had to exercise additional caution as they snuck into the last house of the night. (This required additional super secret spy noises on Yaaroghkh’s part.)
They used Caedes’ Flying Psychologist’s Sofa to land on the roof of their last house, trusting to the darkness of the witching hour to disguise their presence, and snuck down the chimney into the living room. There Naveen, Young Master of the ChristMassive Corporation (the largest producer of luxury Christmas “toys” for adults) was pacing the floor, rebuking the police officer who was trying, in vain, to placate him.
“You’re telling me that five - five - of the greatest members of the city have been driven mad by some stark raving lunatic wielding some sort of demonic toy, and the city’s police don’t even know what they look like? What kind of a joke are you?”
“We’re trying to get the survivors to interview with a sketch artist, but most only saw a blur moving across the landscape, and a large part are simply raving about ‘alien shapes in the architectonic void.’ The information is hardly useful, sir.”
Naveen slammed his hand on the coffee table. “Then get back out there, and get information that is. The people who’ve been wronged by this madman are among our finest contributors to society - and if I were you, I wouldn’t want to be the one to report that I’d let their assault go unavenged.”
The police officer bristled, but left, not wanting to court death. Caedes and Yaaroghkh waited for five minutes after they heard the door slam, until it was clear that Naveen was alone. The latter had sat down with a sigh at his table, pouring himself a water.
His hands stopped responding midway through, and he could only stare in horror as, helplessly, the man and his toy walked out of the darkness. The water poured over the glass, across the table, and onto the carpet, forgotten as he came face to face with the Master of Puppets. Said Master was looking jovial as he took a drag on his cigar, breathing the smoke into a vacant corner of the room.
He sat down in a chair opposite the terrified Young Master, unzipping his mouth. “You already know who I am, so I’ll cut straight to the chase: are you responsible for the assault on Santa’s workshop?”
Naveen stared blankly. “That’s why you’re been wandering over the neighbourhood, with whatever malefic device you have hiding in the corner? Such a paltry reason - who cares if the magic goes out of Christmas, so long as the holiday goes on?”
“I’m not sensing a denial.” Caede observed tranquilly, taking another puff on his cigar, and once more blowing the smoke into an unoccupied part of the room.
Naveen snorted. “I didn’t do it. You’re wasting your time here - not that I’d expect the likes of you to know how to manage it well. But I know who did.”
He looked archly at Caedes, who took the hint. “Well, I can’t let you go unscathed - it would ruin my reputation - but when I leave, I’ll give you a choice.”
“…Good enough, I suppose. You want to know who assaulted Santa’s workshop, go check out Das Gleiche.”
“Das Gleiche? Them?” Caedes asked, with some measure of surprise.
“Sure. We’ve partnered with them before, so they asked if we wanted to join in when they were coming up with the plan. We said no, naturally - whether Christmas is full of magic and innocence and whimsy and joy is irrelevant to whether or not it’s profitable.”
Caedes blinked with surprise, but shrugged. Life was weird sometimes.
“Thank you for your time,” he said as he stood up. “Now for your choice: Death, or the Christmas Elf?”